Charting a Course for the Girl Scouts

Leadership, diversity, values. For Marsha Johnson Evans, the
goals of Girl Scouting reflect her commitment to service and a respect
for potential

By Laura Ferguson

When Marsha Johnson Evans, F77, retired after a 29-year career
in the United States Navy, she could have enjoyed a well-deserved
rest. She could have reflected on a military career in which she
held key leadership roles including head of worldwide recruiting,
chief of staff at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, and superintendent
of the Naval Postgraduate School. She could have been justifiably
satisfied to have achieved the rank of Rear Admiral, only the second
woman to attain this prestigious position.

But instead, Evans went back to work. In January 1998, she was
appointed executive director of the Girl Scouts, the largest organization
for girls in the world. The Girl Scouts, says Evans, is not such
a far stretch from the Navy as it first seems: it makes good use
of her experience in training, budget and management, and recruitment
within a large organization. But perhaps more important, it allows
her to continue her passionate involvement with ways of empowering
women. Throughout her Navy career, she was at the forefront of efforts
to increase opportunities for women, including heading a task force
after Tailhook to improve the status of women in the Navy and Marine
Corps. At the Girl Scouts, Evans could focus on a new age group-from
5 or 6 to 17. In troops across the country, the goals of leadership,
diversity, and personal values aim to help scouts develop confidence,
learn critical life skills, and deepen a sense of their own possibilities.
For Evans, these ideals are close to her own commitment to patriotism,
service and respect for others. "When I saw the opening for
a director of the Girl Scouts of the United States, my first response
was 'How exciting!' " recalls Evans, 51. "I was ready
to try new things, and being part of such a respected organization
was very appealing."

A native of Springfield, Illinois, Evans, known as "Marty,"
grew up in a military family: her father was a chief petty officer
in the Navy. She was an active Girl Scout from the second to the
ninth grade, and fondly remembers her mother's support as a troop
leader. After attending Occidental College in Los Angeles and serving
in the Navy for nine years, she earned a master's degree from the
Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1977. If much has changed
for women over the past 30 years, Evans has witnessed it with a
grateful eye. But at her desk at Girl Scout headquarters in New
York, she remains impatient for more awareness of gender issues,
particularly of the obstacles that confront young girls and teens.
"Girls and young women are under tremendous pressures these
days, and it's organizations like the Girl Scouts that are working
to inspire them to believe in themselves. How they perceive themselves
today can make a tremendous difference in how they take charge of
their lives as women."

I wanted to talk first about your Tufts connections. You'd been
in the Navy for nine years when you came to Tufts to earn a master's
at the Fletcher School. What brought you to Fletcher?
At the time I was a Naval officer, and I had been given the opportunity
to go to just about any school in the country on a fully funded
Navy scholarship. I had known a couple of people who had graduated
from Fletcher, and the more I checked on it the more appealing it
was in terms of what it offered and the research I could do. I was
favorably disposed on the basis of alums, and once I got there it
was wonderful.

What do you remember from those years?
I would say my classmates. They were people of so many perspectives
and they tended to have worked in business, the State Department
or various nongovernmental organizations, so they were a source
of diverse thinking and it was great. Also, the faculty were terrific,
very concerned about students and our progress.

Were there lessons from graduate school that stood you in good
stead throughout your career?
I think in terms of the range of courses, from international law
to diplomatic history to economics, the curriculum was extremely
valuable for a military officer who knew she was going to be assigned
to different parts of the world and have different responsibilities.

What motivated you to strive for greater responsibility within
the Navy?
I always felt that the Navy gave me an opportunity to do interesting
and exciting things, to be involved in very current and fast-moving
issues, and I suppose I thrived in that environment. I loved the
fact that I wasn't doing the same thing year after year; the world
was changing and I had the chance to change with it. And you know,
the Navy believed in me. I was given wonderful opportunities. As
I accomplished those things, I had more ahead of me. When I was
contacted by the Girl Scouts, it seemed that the position was a
natural follow on. In the Navy, in addition to my primary responsibilities
I had also been fairly involved in expanding opportunities for women,
so I saw the Girl Scouts as a way to continue in that work in an
organization that prepares girls and young women for all the opportunities
ahead of them. It's a nice connection.

Do you see a common thread between your career in the Navy and
serving as the national executive director of the Girl Scouts?
They are both value-centered organizations and they are both focused
on developing the potential of people I think are critical to the
nation's success--from different perspectives--but still equally
critical. It's been, in the last 20 years, at least in my career,
an exciting time for women. Things have opened up. So there is certainly
confluence between the Navy and Girl Scouts; I don't think of them
as disparate organizations as some people might. They are also large
organizations. The Navy has some 400,000 people in it and now the
Girl Scouts has 3.5 million. They are both large organizations with
structures to support their needs.

Were there challenges you faced in the Navy because you were
a woman?
There were views, especially in the late 1960s and 1970s, about
the role women should play, and gradually, because of the end of
the draft and the need to recruit more women to meet their requirements,
the Navy began to take a more enlightened view of what women could
and should be doing. But sure, there are always challenges. When
I joined the Navy, women were about 2 percent of the total force
and now women comprise 13 to 14 percent. As long as you are in a
minority, there are stresses and strains. It was only in 1993 that
the law was changed to open the full range of combat assignments
to women. We had, all the way to 1993, a legal barrier to women
serving in some of the most significant roles.

Why choose a career in the Navy?
Although my father was a Navy careerman, he actually didn't influence
me. I made a very hasty decision during the last six weeks of college
to go into the Navy; I had no inkling of opportunities there, really.
I made a quick decision that I would take two years for the Navy
and then go back to graduate school, and 29 years later I decided
to leave!

What attracted you to a Navy career?
Well, two things. I enjoyed the work; I was changing assignments
roughly every two years and it just seemed that every assignment
was more interesting and exciting than the previous assignment.
And the benefits; the fact that the Navy selected me to receive
a fully funded graduate school education, that was pretty nice.
I love the travel; I lived in Tokyo and London and had a chance
to travel all over the place, spent a lot of time in Germany. I
also enjoyed working with the people in the Navy. They are a very
talented group of professionals, very committed. That was always
a source of satisfaction, that my colleagues were first-rate.

Have you identified specific goals that you'd like the Girl
Scouts to accomplish?
The first and foremost goal is that, while we have about 2.8 million
girls who are scouts-the rest being adults-I would love to see a
time when more girls are Girl Scouts. I strongly believe in the
program and how we help girls become successful in life. Right now
about 11 percent of the girls in this country from ages 5 to 17
are Girl Scouts. I'd love to see that percentage grow. We want to
reach more girls who are from disadvantaged socioeconomic situations,
more girls from racial, ethnic, and minority groups who perhaps
in the past haven't had the chance to be part of Girl Scouts. So
that's our goal, to make Girl Scouting available to every girl.
It's a safe place, where girls are working with caring adults. I
think that's very important.
Another thing I'd like to see is a breakthrough in terms of how
the public sees Girl Scouting. They certainly equate us with cookies
and candy and crafts. We are so much more. We have girls who are
doing incredible things, from learning about computers and auto
maintenance to learning all kinds of life skills such as financial
management.
For instance, many people probably don't know that we now have projects
for girls in homeless shelters and juvenile detention, as well as
for girls whose parents are migrant workers or whose mothers are
in prison. So I hope in the coming years we can help the American
public appreciate that today Girl Scouts is a lot more than what
their limited views of Girl Scouts might have been in the past.

You've been a passionate advocate for the advancement of women
in the military. What are your hopes for working women?
Your question is interesting. Today, as more women enter the workplace,
I hope that they will have the skills and confidence to meet life's
challenges head-on; that they will have enough self-esteem to go
after nontraditional jobs, in, for example, the fields of science
and technology, where men have dominated; and that they will have
the tenacity to break through the glass ceiling. In my opinion,
opportunities are starting to come for women, so women need to be
ready. If you can dream it, you can be it.

You've mentioned that you enjoy encouraging people "to
do extraordinary things." How do you motivate people for success?
You have to try to inspire people and you have to help them focus
on what's at stake if they don't do extraordinary things. Certainly,
in the Navy there is no prize for second place. Either you win or
you lose. And I think in Girl Scouts it's the same; if girls are
going to have every opportunity to be successful and to rise above
their own particular circumstances, as a nation we have to band
together and figure out how we can give girls, and boys, too, the
opportunities to be in a setting where they can develop, to know
that people care about them, and to really get a good start in life.
I don't think there is a prize for second place in that business
either. To say that we're going to let one girl or woman slip through
the cracks and get involved with drugs or pregnancy is a loss. I
think we have an extraordinary challenge and the stakes are very
high. And when I say "as a nation," what I'm really talking
about is that it's a national issue. We're losing too many today
to all the problems of our culture and I think Girl Scouts plays
a role, and many other youth-serving organizations-there is more
than enough work for every single organization to do, and we all
have to do a better job of reaching young people.

Do you see yourself at heart as a diplomat or a leader?
I've been given those roles, and fortunately, I've been given a
lot of support to try to do the best I can do. That is how it plays
out: to use the resources you've been given. In this case, at the
Girl Scouts, to access resources, including public support, increase
funding from a variety of sources, inspire the people who work on
the Girl Scout staff and our volunteers, and organize them for success.
It's about taking what you have, looking at what you can develop,
pulling it together, and moving forward.

Are there requisites for visionary leadership?
I do a fair amount of speaking on leadership, and I've always said
if you don't know where you're going, if you don't know what's important
to you, if you don't have a plan you want to accomplish, any road
will take you someplace, but it may not be where you really want
to go. I've always approached things with a goal in mind and with
Girl Scouts that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to change
the public's perception, we're trying to develop new strategies
to bring scouting to more girls, to develop new sources of funding.
We have a clear picture of where we want to go. If you don't have
that, I think you tend to flounder. You may be lucky, but you won't
be lucky many times.

Do you have heroes?
Oh, yes. Our founder, Juliette Gordon Low was an amazing woman.
In 1912 she had this crazy idea about organizing girls. She lived
in Savannah with the genteel set; so she had a fairly radical notion.
She also had a disability, hearing problems stemming from a disease,
and so from the very beginning she had a vision that Girl Scouts
would be inviting to all girls with all kinds of disabilities. She
was a pretty extraordinary woman when you think of what resulted
from her idea: more than 40 million women have been Girl Scouts.
I also admire General George Marshall, and every now and then I
ask myself how he would have approached a particular issue. He was
a man of extraordinary character, and character for me is one of
the very important, immutable requirements for life. By character
I mean trying to do the right thing, trying to be morally strong,
having the courage to make the tough choice, even though it's tougher
to take that particular stance. Eleanor Roosevelt also was someone
of great character and ability.

What message would you give to girls who are in Girl Scouts
or considering it?
I always tell girls they can do anything or be anything they set
their minds to. Nobody can make them feel that they can't except
themselves. I always try to leave them, especially the older girls,
with the notion that nobody can make you feel like a second-class
citizen unless you let yourself be one.

Do you find that they look up to you as someone who has set
an example of what can be done?
I guess some have looked up to me, in the sense that they've never
met a woman admiral before. There is something unexpected in that.
Certainly it was unexpected in my own life. I never set out to be
an admiral. I always set out to do the best I could do. And I've
always felt that I tried to live a courageous kind of life. If I
saw something that needed to be changed, I would take a position
of speaking up for change. You know, there's the idea that you are
never rewarded in large organizations for standing up for a particular
issue that may be unpopular. But I have stood up for women's issues.
I headed the task force after Tailhook to change the culture and
climate in the Navy and Marine Corps and nobody was more surprised
than I that I later became an admiral. We tend to have preconceived
notions that large organizations don't reward or validate people
who try to work within the system and change things. I'm living
proof that people who raise difficult issues can succeed. So if
girls do look to me as an example, I hope they see that by believing
in themselves and by trying to do the right thing, it is possible
to change the world from within.